


the light in your eyes has been squandered (there's no angel in you in the end)

by voxofthevoid



Series: tear me to pieces, skin to bone (hello, welcome home) [3]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Bucky Barnes as Captain America, Canon-Typical Violence, Captor Bonding, Dubious Consent, Emotional Manipulation, Forced Orgasm, M/M, Murder, Painful Sex, Physical Abuse, Rape/Non-con Elements, Rimming, Somnophilia, Spit As Lube, Steve Rogers as the Winter Soldier, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:53:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24841840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voxofthevoid/pseuds/voxofthevoid
Summary: “Not bad,” Steve says, eyeing Bucky calculatingly. He wipes his hand across his bloodied lips, smearing red across his jaw. “I’ve seen videos of you with that shield and your gun. But I like this better. You’re good with your fists.”“Had to be,” Bucky says grimly. “Someone had to fish your fool ass out of back alleys and dumpsters.”Steve’s eyes darken. He doesn’t like it much when Bucky brings up the past he doesn’t remember. Some things strike harder than others. Their Brooklyn days certainly do. The one time Bucky dared to mention Sarah Rogers, the marks took days to heal.Steve’s boot presses down firmly, right over where Steve’s name is carved into Bucky’s stomach. Bucky grits his teeth and breathes through his nose, swallowing the pained sounds that want to crawl up his throat. He wishes he could exert half as much control on his slowly hardening dick.He's got his wires crossed these days. It used to be different. The violence he and Steve engaged in was make-believe, play-acting. This isn’t, but it doesn’t seem to matter, and Bucky’s not sure if it’s some unspeakable perversity or sheer self-preservation.-It's a hell of a thing, being loved by a ghost.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Series: tear me to pieces, skin to bone (hello, welcome home) [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1702297
Comments: 91
Kudos: 402





	the light in your eyes has been squandered (there's no angel in you in the end)

**Author's Note:**

> ~~The date for this is off but I'll fix that once ao3 agrees with my timezone.~~ Fixed it.
> 
> The lovely edits are by kocuria! Head over to [tumblr](https://kocuria.tumblr.com/) for more of her content <3
> 
> And you can find me [here](https://voxofthevoid.tumblr.com/).
> 
> As always, this series ain't pretty so read the tags carefully. Feel free to hit me up on tumblr to ask anything - actually no, please don't ask me if I think actual, literal rape is okay, I tend to find that insulting.

* * *

* * *

Bucky wakes up to a weight on his back and an assful of dick.

He yelps, instinctively trying to scramble upright, but Steve’s got him pinned down good, his body flat over Bucky’s. His arms are pinned at his sides, Steve’s fingers tight around both wrists. It’s not a comfortable position, but that barely registers, the sensation of suddenly being so goddamn full overwhelming all other thought.

Steve’s breath falls on Bucky’s nape, hot and a little wet.

“What—what’re you _doing_?” Bucky gasps.

It’s hard to breathe, harder still to form thoughts and words. Steve’s grip on his wrists tightens, and Bucky can feel bruises forming on the right one. His body’s heavy and limp from sleep, but fuck, his ass _burns_.

“Good morning,” Steve greets warmly. “Took you long enough.”

“What? _Steve_.”

Teeth close in on his left shoulder, sinking roughly into scar tissue. Steve likes them, likes leaving his own marks on what the crash did to Bucky, and it gets him squirming each fucking time, struggling ineffectually under Steve.

“Opened you up for half an hour,” Steve says, and he sounds amused in a lazy sort of way, like working his dick in and out of Bucky’s ass, never pulling out more than a couple of inches, is nothing but a light pastime.

“I don’t—you didn’t—”

“Got you real wet, Buck. You were dripping with it, writhing all around. Made the sweetest noises, just beggin’ for it.” Steve fucks into him, a little rougher than before, and Bucky can feel it, how loose and sloppy he is, Steve’s cock making wet, filthy noises as it slides in and out of him. “Always so fucking hungry for it.”

Bucky shakes his head, but he doesn’t have the breath to protest, not when Steve’s suddenly lifting off him and yanking him onto all fours and fucking in hard and deep like he wants to break Bucky on his cock.

-

“You’ve gottta start earning your keep.”

Bucky’s a little too preoccupied relearning how to fucking breathe to register what Steve says, at least at first. When he does, he just turns his head and pins Steve with an unimpressed look.

“Isn’t that what I’m doing?”

Steve’s propped up on an elbow. His beard’s thicker, his hair longer. It always grew too fast after Steve got the serum, and he cut it religiously back in the war. Not anymore. Bucky has seen him trim it once or twice, but mostly, he’s content to let it grow. It’s not a bad look on him. Odd to Bucky, but not bad. Sometimes, he thinks it’s good to have a physical marker or ten to distinguish what Steve has become from the man he used to be, but that particular lesson never seems to stick.

Case in point—Bucky naked in bed and fucked open, hole still sore from how brutally Steve went at it. Bucky came, is the thing. Unprompted and untouched, shooting all over himself at the sharp pain of Steve’s teeth sinking into his shoulder.

Steve gives him a quick once-over, expression blank.

“If all I wanted was a hole to fuck, I’d pay for it.”

Bucky bares his teeth. It’s not that it doesn’t get to him. He’s just learned not to show it. Mostly. The last two months with Steve have been the longest and shortest of his life, and Bucky’s thought so many times of just leaving but he can’t make himself go through with it. The go-bag he stashes under loose floorboards or the like in every hidey hole they’ve been to is an open secret. Steve’s pointed lack of perturbation over it is frankly terrifying, but then, so is nearly everything Steve does.

He's become used to it.

“Too much risk,” Bucky says, mouth twisting into some approximation of a smile. “Who knows what might be a honeypot.”

“Are you?”

“You know I’m not.”

Steve doesn’t smile when he reaches for Bucky. It’s so easy for him to maneuver Bucky’s body, shifting muscle and metal like they’re made of cotton. Bucky makes a vague, protesting sound as he’s hauled on top of Steve. He feels a little dwarfed whenever he’s pressed along Steve’s bulk. Whatever conditioning Hydra gave to him makes him pack on muscles over muscles, and it takes Steve little effort and a lot of food to maintain it. It’s not empty gym-brat strength; Bucky has seen him throw a car and punch right through a STRIKE agent’s chest, the last two times S.H.I.E.L.D was unfortunate enough to catch up with them.

It's a very different kind of violence that he inflicts on Bucky.

He closes his eyes when Steve slides two thick fingers back into his sore, wet hole. He’s dripping come, and Steve moves his fingers like he’s trying to see how thoroughly he’s messed Bucky up inside.

Bucky’s not surprised when the blunt heat of a cockhead nudges his hole, but he still asks, “Haven’t you had enough?”

Steve sounds so hungry when he answers.

“Never gonna have enough of you.”

It’s slower this time. Steve lets Bucky just lie on his chest and breathe through his mouth as he’s moved slowly over Steve’s cock. The whole of it doesn’t slide into him, not once, but what he gets is more than enough to make sparks race up his spine and get him twitching helplessly around the intrusion. He doesn’t know how long it is before Steve comes. Bucky’s hard again by the time Steve pulls out, but he doesn’t have the energy to do much about it. Maybe if he begs, Steve will jerk him off, but he can’t bring himself to do that either.

Bucky’s rolled off Steve. The bruises on his hips and ass from Steve’s gripping fingers twinge semi-pleasantly.

It is kind of nice when Steve spoons up behind Bucky and holds him close, one tree-trunk arm wrapped firmly around Bucky’s middle. Steve tucks Bucky under his chin, a position drenched in echoes of their past—Bucky curled over skinny, sickly Steve, praying to a god he was rapidly losing belief in for one more winter, one more year of work and pain and carefully hoarded moments of effervescent bliss. And later, Steve pulling Bucky into his arms in the middle of forests or a cramped officer’s room, blanketing Bucky in the new, unnatural warmth of Steve’s flesh.

Bucky lays his own arm over the one Steve has thrown around him. It’s the metal one, the plates gleaming in the morning light. Bucky stares, as he often does, at the thin band around the wrist. In this position, it’s almost aligned with the identical band on Steve’s wrist, except that one’s the remote and Bucky’s is the prison.

“They made it to control me, back when I started regaining a bit of myself,” Steve told him, long weeks back when he still drugged Bucky in between shifting locations. “It didn’t help them much. Quite the opposite. It’s more effective on you.”

Bucky, writhing on the bed as the band sent blinding pulses of pain through him, was in no position then to listen, let alone respond.

“I’m quite attached to it,” Steve said before switching it off.

It was only hours afterward that Bucky could go over the words and truly think of what they meant.

The bands make his gut tighten even now, fear spreading its spidery webs, but he can’t help imagining how it must have been for Steve, what it must have taken for him to resist. Bucky sure can’t. The metal’s an active hindrance, succumbing easily to the device, and he doesn’t know whether Steve modified the band to achieve that effect, but what does it matter anyway? Bucky’s fucked, literally and metaphorically, and he asked for it. Begged for it.

He wishes he knew if he regretted it, but his mind’s a maze these days.

“What then?” Bucky asks.

“Hmm?”

“How do you want me to earn my keep?”

Steve hums again, then presses a sweet, lingering kiss to Bucky’s temple. Bucky recognizes it as a reward, positive enforcement as if he’s a goddamn dog, but no amount of awareness stops it from working.

He turns his head for a proper kiss, and Steve gives it to him, mouth warm and soft over Bucky’s, stretched into a smile.

-

“Rise and shine, Aurora.”

The cheerful command is followed by fingers twisting into Bucky’s hair and shaking him a little. Bucky jolts into full awareness from the pleasant haze of sleep, heart racing double time. It’s never nothing but terrifying to see Steve be so cheery. What follows usually leaves Bucky in a world of pain and confusing pleasure.

He lurches upright, and Steve’s hand falls away from his hair with one last tug.

Bucky blinks the grit from his eyes and stares up at him. Steve’s dressed in compression shirt and tac pants, fingerless gloves adorning both hands.

“Why are you wearing that?”

“We’re going to spar. C’mon. Up.”

Bucky gets up, stretching the sleep out of his slightly sore muscles. He’s naked, and he can feel Steve’s gaze on him like a physical weight. Bucky meets his eyes, and he supposes the look in them could be called admiring, but he’d prefer some other word that can capture the way it makes Bucky feel simultaneously wanted and hunted.

Steve crowds close, and Bucky’s heart’s racing now for very different reasons. He closes his eyes when Steve runs an index finger from under his eyes to his jaw, the touch fleetingly tender.

“Go,” Steve says softly.

Bucky stumbles to the bathroom, feeling Steve’s eyes on him the whole time but unable to make himself look back and check.

He takes a long, hot shower. He goes over the morning a hundred times in his head, lingering on useless details like the way Steve’s eyes shone bright blue in the light of the window and how long his fingers looked in those gloves. They’re points of familiarity in a man Bucky doesn’t quite recognize anymore, but the hard line of Steve’s unsmiling mouth and the violence coiled in his muscles are equally familiar now. Bucky is learning the man Steve has become, but he can’t quite stop searching for the man with whom he spent a lifetime seventy years ago.

Bucky doesn’t have tac gear. He’s never fought anyone since came to Steve, unless Steve himself counts. Those don’t count as fights, not with the way they always end. There have been…altercations with S.H.I.E.L.D, though thankfully not the Avengers, but Bucky stayed in the sidelines, out of sight and bitterly grateful that Steve didn’t need help because if he was in danger, if he called out for Bucky, he’d go and slaughter his own people because that’s the kind of madness Steve birthed in him.

Bucky would burn the world for Steve. He’d burn himself.

He dresses in sweatpants and a tank top, then picks his way over to the guest room that Steve has converted into a makeshift gym. They’ve been in London for eleven days now. It’s the longest they’ve stayed in one place.

Steve’s doing push-ups when Bucky enters the room. Bucky can hear him mutter numbers under his breath, and he doesn’t stop or greet Bucky. Sweat glistens on defined muscles, and Bucky watches Steve with a twist of helpless need in his stomach.

“…thirty-eight, thirty-nine, forty.”

Steve levers himself upright in a smooth, boneless movement that’s more eerie than graceful. He moves differently now. The serum gave him an amazing body and the ability to control it with little effort, but the way he moves and fights now is something straight out of a nightmare.

Steve beckons silently at Bucky, and Bucky shuffles over to stand on one edge of the mat.

“Why are we doing this?”

“I need to know what you’re capable of before we go on mission together. Can’t trust you to watch my back if I don’t know you can do it properly, Buck.”

Bucky’s smile is small and bitter.

“You’d trust me at your back at all? Moving a little fast, aren’t you? Hasn’t been that long since you’d drug me each time we moved.”

Steve just shrugs, unrepentant.

“I know you,” is all he says, voice brimming with that dark confidence he seems to have about Bucky.

 _You’re mine_ , Steve said the day he carved his claim on Bucky’s skin. His hand drifts automatically to the scarred flesh of his abdomen. It twinges a little, still healing. But Steve will cut them open before they can.

S T E V E—says the ragged letters set into Bucky’s flesh.

Steve’s gaze is focused intently on Bucky’s hand. He takes it away and lets it fall to his side, forcing his body to relax. He doesn’t take his eyes off Steve, knows without either of them saying anything that that’s stupid.

There’s no warning when Steve flies at him, but then, Bucky doesn’t need it.

It’s evident, early on, that Steve truly is just sparring, not fighting. There’s none of his usual efficient brutality, and sure, his blows will leave bruises, but they’re likely no worse than the ones Bucky accrues during sex. Steve’s really just testing Bucky, seeing how fast he moves, how hard he hits.

Bucky’s the one who turns it into a battle. Because he just can’t help it. Because Steve makes the small, scared animal in him go blind with panic.

Steve takes it calmly, barely grunting when Bucky’s metal grip breaks two of the fingers in his left hand. He doesn’t seem bothered by Bucky’s climbing violence, sidestepping punches and spinning away from kicks with a quirk to his mouth that might even be called a smile.

Bucky’s serum is not slack in terms of physiological modifications. He doesn’t tire, doesn’t do more than sweat through his clothes and breathe hard as the minutes tick by and the fight turns frantic.

He loses, of course. He was never not going to, wouldn’t have fought so hard if he didn’t know that for sure.

Steve takes him down with a fist driven hard into his solar plexus and an almost gentle blow to the head. Bucky collapses on the mat, and it’s not that he can’t get up, just that Steve’s boot comes down on his stomach before he can, pinning him down.

“Not bad,” Steve says, eyeing Bucky calculatingly. He wipes his hand across his bloodied lips, smearing red across his jaw. “I’ve seen videos of you with that shield and your gun. But I like this better. You’re good with your fists.”

“Had to be,” Bucky says grimly. “Someone had to fish your fool ass out of back alleys and dumpsters.”

Steve’s eyes darken. He doesn’t like it much when Bucky brings up the past he doesn’t remember. Some things hit worse than others. Their Brooklyn days certainly do. The one time Bucky dared to mention Sarah Rogers, the marks took days to heal.

Steve’s boot presses down firmly, right over where Steve’s name is carved into Bucky’s stomach. Bucky grits his teeth and breathes through his nose, swallowing the pained sounds that want to crawl up his throat. He wishes he could exert half as much control on his slowly hardening dick.

He's got his wires crossed these days. It used to be different. The violence he and Steve engaged in was make-believe, play-acting. This isn’t, but it doesn’t seem to matter, and Bucky’s not sure if it’s some unspeakable perversity or sheer self-preservation.

Steve’s stormy expression turns placid all of a sudden, and it gives Bucky half a second of warning before the pressure on his stomach vanishes and returns instead on his fucking crotch.

“Jesus,” Bucky whispers, staring stunned at the black combat boots poised so delicately on top of his half-hard dick.

Steve shifts his foot, places it more firmly over Bucky’s cock, and even through the sweats, it’s a solid, dangerous pressure. Bucky’s cock swells under it, throbbing hot. Steve notices, couldn’t possibly miss it, and his answering smile could cut right through glass.

“Go on,” he tells Bucky.

Bucky shakes his head, frantic and violent. Steve just raises an eyebrow.

“You can come like this. If you don’t, you won’t be coming at all for a month.”

Everything in Bucky goes tight and hot at that, arousal warring with incredulity. Steve must see both reflected in Bucky’s expression because he presses his foot down threateningly. When he speaks, there’s a challenge in his tone.

“Think I won’t do it? Sweetheart, I’ve got a nice cock-cage waiting with your name on it, only question is how long I’m gonna use it.”

Bucky face flames, and his head spins as he thinks about it. He believes Steve, god, he does. The man never fucking lies, not even when Bucky wishes he would, and he’s got a frankly ridiculous collection of sex toys and most of them do, as Steve said, have Bucky’s name on them. Literally, sometimes.

“Move,” Steve orders.

Bucky does, hips jerking up to grind his dick into the unforgiving boots. It hurts a little and then it hurts a lot when Steve answers it turn, boot grinding down on Bucky.

“Hurts,” Bucky whimpers, and it’s ritual by now, his protest and Steve doubling down on whatever’s causing it.

Bucky claws at the mat, whole body arching as he tries instinctively to get the fuck away, except the position only makes it worse, pressing his dick more firmly into Steve’s boot.

“Faster,” Steve says, head tilted to the side like he’s fucking curious. “I want to see you work for it.”

Bucky’s got tears in his eyes, and he blinks them away. He can’t stop watching himself fuck up into Steve. The bulge in his pants is obscene, but that’s nothing compared to how it looks pressed up to Steve’s boot, the black a glaring contrast to the pale blue sweats with its little wet spot.

“Steve,” Bucky gasps, breath hitching on a sob. “Steve, please.”

“Come on,” Steve murmurs, angling his toe and digging it none too gently into Bucky’s dick. His scream is short and shuddering. “Yeah, that’s it. Keep moving like that.”

Bucky does, hips thrusting violently upwards, chasing the jolts of pleasured buried in harsh pulses of pain. His vision’s blurry, his cheeks wet with tears, and his throat hurts from choking on cries that are half-realized versions of Steve’s name.

It’s a relief when it’s over, as filthy as it feels when come seeps into his sweats and wets the underside of Steve’s boot.

Steve takes his foot away, standing casually there as he watches Bucky pant and shake apart. His cock still aches, a raw throb under the orgasmic haze. Steve reaches down, extending his hand—the one without the broken fingers—to Bucky.

Bucky takes it and is hauled off the mat, positioned upright with little help from his own body. He collapses on Steve, still trembling violently, and even his metal hand’s barely steady as he reaches for Steve’s fly.

Steve’s hand grips his wrist, halting it in its tracks.

“No,” he murmurs, lips brushing Bucky’s ear. “I’m good. You did well, Buck. So well.”

Bucky shivers, the praise going right to his head. Steve kisses him, chapped lips brushing Bucky’s softly, and he melts into it, clinging to Steve and letting himself be held.

-

They track a stray Hydra neurosurgeon to Pakistan. Steve tells him that more than a few of them slipped through the cracks despite the Winter Soldier’s and S.H.I.E.L.D’s separate but extremely effective efforts to kill or contain every one of them. Bucky knows as much, having read up on Hydra and the Soldier even before he took that first, fateful mission. Steve died to stop Hydra, and it was a hell of a blow, seeing in stark lines the damage they did while Bucky slept in the ice. It felt, then, like he had squandered Steve’s sacrifice when he thought he was honoring it.

Now, he knows the truth was much, much worse.

They stand out with their pale skin and blue eyes but no more than any other, clueless white tourist. They’ve got a paper trail that says they’re brothers visiting on a somewhat cheap tourism package. They don’t much look like brothers. Steve’s dyed his hair a gingery red and shaved his beard. Bucky’s got black hair and perpetual stubble. And he doesn’t know how or when Steve learned to use make-up to alter the shape of one’s face, but damn if he isn’t good at it. It’s almost as effective as those synth-masks S.H.I.E.L.D doles out to its agents.

Their target blends in with far less trouble. Second generation Indian American, but it was easy enough for someone that high up in Hydra to fake citizenship. There’s a certain irony in her claiming Pakistan as her home, but Bucky’s in no place to appreciate it.

She’s got a husband and spends her days puttering around the house, deceptively harmless as she plays the sweet old lady. Bucky’s seen the file. Seen the papers she wrote on brain chemistry, the improvements made to the wiping mechanism at her behest. He’s been good at killing ever since they trained him for it, but Bucky’s never really enjoyed it. This time, he just might.

And he does.

The window shatters. Her blood splatters the tiled floor.

Steve’s hand is a warm weight when it comes to rest on Bucky’s shoulder, squeezing once. His expression is pleased, his voice praising when he congratulates Bucky on a job well done.

It sinks into Bucky’s bones, makes him weightless as they calmly flee to the Quinjet.

-

It was a surprise, finding out Steve had a goddamn Quinjet. It made sense when Bucky thought about it though. Steve wrecked his fair share of Hydra bases and cleaned house for S.H.I.E.L.D without them quite knowing it before he sent Fury that folder on the true purpose of Insight and many, many other unpleasant projects. It would have been easy enough to appropriate a Quinjet. They weren’t exactly lying around for the picking, but the Hydra sects had a fair share of pretty much everything stashed away.

Bucky does not remember that base in Sokovia fondly. He wonders, even now, what happened to those twins after they escaped.

“Second thoughts?”

Bucky jerks at Steve’s voice and finds him leaning on the door to the cockpit, eyeing Bucky speculatively.

“About what?”

“This,” Steve says, stalking towards Bucky. “Me.”

Bucky shakes his head.

Steve yanks him to his feet and into a kiss, swallowing Bucky’s surprised yelp. He licks in, tongue pushing past Bucky’s lips to taste him deep. Bucky kisses back, sucking messily on Steve’s tongue and groping his insanely broad shoulders, determined to enjoy this while it lasts. It’s not that they don’t kiss much or often. But usually, either it’s a precursor to more extreme antics or Bucky’s drowning in too much of something to really reciprocate.

This is nice though. Steve’s mouth on his, sharing air and breath. It’s nice.

And it doesn’t end, not for a long time. Bucky’s the one left pushing for more, humping lazily against Steve’s leg as he pants open-mouthed around Steve’s tongue.

“I know, I know,” Steve says, laughing a little. He’s got a pleasant laugh, when it’s not cruel. It’s both different and familiar, and Bucky likes it.

Then Steve’s fingers are fiddling with his fly, popping the button and sliding the zipper down. Bucky’s dick jumps in his boxers when Steve palms it through the fabric, massaging gently.

“You did good,” Steve murmurs, lips moving against Bucky’s jaw. “Sweetest shot I’ve ever seen. You’re good with a gun, aren’t you, Buck?”

Steve punctuates that bit with a teasing squeeze of Bucky’s dick, and Bucky laughs in spite of himself.

“Asshole,” he says breathlessly, tilting his hips into Steve’s hand. “And I am, you know I am.”

“Guess I do,” Steve says. He kisses Bucky, close-lipped and hard. “Good boy. My boy.”

Bucky shudders violently, going cross-eyed as those words spear into his fucking soul.

“Steve, Stevie, please.”

Steve hushes him again, pressing a smile to Bucky’s cheek. He kisses down Bucky’s throat and sucks on that spot where neck meets shoulder, tongue tracing maddening patterns on the skin there while his hand works Bucky’s pants and underwear down to his knees. Bucky could help, but he likes this, being able to just clutch at Steve and be given pleasure.

Steve’s gentle with him, almost sweet. Bucky moans at the sight of Steve licking a broad, wet stripe up his arm, and the sound rises in pitch when Steve wraps it around Bucky’s cock. He keeps nibbling along Bucky’s jaw and throat as he strokes him, letting Bucky harden fully in his hot, slick grip. Steve’s free hand slides into Bucky’s hair, nails pleasantly scritching the scalp.

“Good?” Steve asks, speeding the movement of his hand.

“Yes,” Bucky sighs, baring his throat for a sucking kiss. “S’good, so good.”

Steve makes a pleased sound and keeps stroking. There’s no hurry to it, just firm, steady movement, but Steve knows what to do to make Bucky lose his mind. His thumb plays with the tip, teasing the foreskin back to rub against the sensitive head. He tightens his grip at the base and twists his whole hand on the upward stroke.

He makes Bucky see stars.

Bucky twists his hands into the little give Steve’s tac gear gives him and happily hangs on for dear life.

He comes with a Steve’s name a reverent whisper on his tongue, back arching and toes curling as he spills all over Steve’s fingers. Steve keeps working him through it but gentles his touch at the first twitch of oversensitivity.

Bucky’s dazed when Steve pulls back, body thrumming contently. His gut’s all twisted up, knotted with things Bucky doesn’t dare probe at. It doesn’t matter anyway, not now, when Steve’s looking him with blue eyes gone wide and dark with lust and something that looks like wonder.

It makes Bucky blush for some reason, face heating even under the post-orgasmic flush.

“What?” he asks, not quite able to meet Steve’s stare but unable to look away.

“Nothing,” Steve says. He’s smiling, and the expression doesn’t falter even when he brings his hand up to his mouth and licks Bucky’s come off his fingers. “You taste good.”

Bucky’s knees buckle and he lets it.

Steve looks startled to see Bucky kneeling but realization heats his gaze when Bucky reaches for his belt. He rests the hand not stained with come on the top of Bucky’s head, not gripping the hair or even tangling in the strands, just touching.

It drives Bucky to work faster, flesh fingers shaky and the metal ones steady as he takes Steve’s cock out.

It’s a pretty thing, always has been. Only difference after the serum was that it changed from a nice, big dick Bucky could take with a bit of a burn to a monster of a thing that got him gagging and crying on the regular. He didn’t have complaints in the middle of the war, and he doesn’t have any now.

Steve groans when Bucky swallows him down but doesn’t move, just continues stroking Bucky’s hair as he fucks his mouth up and down on Steve’s cock. It’s good, nice, the weight of it on his tongue and the heat pressing in on his throat. But it’s not quite the same, and in the end, Bucky’s the one who pushes his mouth forward until he’s gagging around the head and then stops, staring up at Steve with wet, pleading eyes.

He whines and delights in Steve’s answering shudder.

“That mouth,” Steve murmurs. His hand cups Bucky’s face, fingers splaying along one cheek while the thumb pushes into his mouth, making space for itself along Steve’s cock. Bucky’s lips feel hot and swollen, and he suckles absently on Steve’s dick, staring unblinkingly at him. “I had dreams about it.”

Bucky moans.

“I know what you need,” Steve says soothingly. His thumb hooks, blunt nail digging into the soft inside of Bucky’s cheek. “Relax. I’ve got you.”

That’s a terrible comfort, more often than not, but it’s what Bucky chose, what he wants. He closes his eyes and tries, like Steve said, to relax, open his throat. Steve’s hips tilt forward, pushing his cock deeper into Bucky, forcing its way past any resistance to slide down his throat. Bucky rakes his nails down Steve’s clothed thighs and tries not to panic as he’s robbed of air. You’d think he get used to it, but desire’s all tangled up with fear these days, and nothing Steve does feels harmless, not anymore.

But he’s almost gentle now as he fucks Bucky’s mouth. He just strokes Bucky’s hair and pulls teasingly on a strand or two as he leisurely works his cock in and out of Bucky’s throat, pulling back far enough to let him breathe after every few thrusts. It’s a slow, lazy rhythm, and Bucky lets it lure him into a soft daze where all that matters is the weight and heat of Steve’s cock on his tongue, in his throat.

When Steve comes, Bucky swallows every drop and licks the head clean.

Steve looks down at him with heavy eyes and parted lips, beautiful and terrible.

-

“You terrify me,” Bucky says that night, settled in bed with Steve lying beside him, the two of them not quite touching.

There’s a soft exhale, then Steve says, “I know.”

Bucky closes his eyes, sees blue and gold under his lids, a pretty boy under a clouded sky.

“I still love you.”

“I know.”

-

The next few targets are Hydra. Once, it’s a splinter cell. Steve goes in, fists swinging and guns blazing, while Bucky perches on a tree and keeps him in his crosshairs. More than once, he stares at that familiar blond head through his scope, fingers twitching on the trigger. Each time, it’s not Steve who falls with a red hole in his forehead but some Hydra goon. When it’s over, Steve stands in a pile of corpses and slants a knowing look in Bucky’s direction, the smirk on his face smug but bitter.

Later, Bucky will wonder whether Steve was easing him in. Not gauging his worth so much as lulling him into a sense of complacency. Bucky never forgets that Steve turned mercenary quite some time before Fury sent Bucky after him, but he doesn’t quite think about it either.

Until he does, until he must.

The target’s a businessman.

Steve doesn’t elaborate, just hands Bucky a file and says, “This one’s yours,” with an expression that gives nothing away.

Corporate fraud seems too fucking trivial to kill someone over. Or at least it does until Bucky goes over the numbers, sees the zeroes piling up, and is reminded unpleasantly of how the world revolves around money, how dollar signs matter more than the blood inside people. He’s not surprised so much as disappointed.

“No witnesses. Collateral damage is acceptable,” Steve says as they drive to the target’s city. The Quinjet is overkill for this. “The client wants to send a message.”

He sounds so bored. Bucky barely recognizes him.

“Why me?” he asks.

Steve doesn’t look away from the road when he answers.

“We have to expand your horizons. You won’t always have righteous rage, Bucky Barnes.”

That’s funny. Steve was always the more righteous of them, like some war god reborn. Things change. People turn.

The target lives in a penthouse apartment. Bucky perches on a roof, Steve nowhere in sight, and tracks the man from his bedroom window to the one in the living room. He’s bland to look at and everything around him gleams with the lifeless perfection that’s straight out of some glossy interior design magazine. He doesn’t look like a thief, just another blonde-haired white guy in a suit and tie.

Bucky’s got his finger on the trigger when the kid walks in. He’s young, ten or twelve, and makes a beeline for his father’s leg.

The bullet shatters the window and an ugly pink vase.

Bucky drops the rifle, cursing under his breath. He doesn’t stay to finish the mission, isn’t that fucking stupid. He books it, rifle disassembled and stashed in its bag, and he leaps from roof to roof and shimmies down balconies until he’s on the ground, ducking between narrow alleys as he picks his way to where their car is parked.

He climbs into the driver’s seat and waits. It’s a good fifteen minutes later that Steve slides into the passenger seat. His gloves are gone, his hands wet. There’s blood caked under his fingernails, a few drops of it splattered on his face. His face is carved of marble.

“Drive,” he says, voice low and cold.

-

The tension builds and simmers through the whole drive, the air between them thick with words unsaid. Steve doesn’t look at Bucky, not once.

It’s only once they’re inside their temporary apartment, door closed and locked behind them, that the delicate silence breaks with the sharp crack of a backhand.

It sends Bucky to his knees, lip splitting and cheek throbbing as he blinks stars from his vision. It’s not the worst Steve’s done to him, hardly the most extreme violence Bucky has endured at his hands, but there’s something about the blow that makes humiliation and anger eat at his gut like acid. He shoots upright and throws himself at Steve, metal fist pulled back for a punch.

It's nothing like the sparring sessions where Steve holds his true strength in check, lets Bucky rail at him, and fucks him into the mat afterwards. There’s no restraint to this, just rigidly controlled fury in the curve of Steve’s knuckles. Bucky spits out blood and curses, half of them aimed at fucking Erskine.

He gets the shit beaten out of him, and his whole body’s aching, throbbing when Steve pins him down and tears off his pants like they’re made of wet tissue.

“No,” Bucky snaps, struggling ineffectually. “Stop it, fuck off, I don’t want this shit.”

Steve laughs, and the sound sends chills down Bucky’s spine. He freezes for a moment, heart jumping right into his throat and pounding for a whole other reason. Fear didn’t register when he was fighting Steve, but it does now, turning his blood to ice.

“Steve,” Bucky says, carefully calm. “Stop.”

“I’d find it cute,” Steve tells him, one hand spreading Bucky’s ass, the other holding him down, “the way you still think that works when you know it doesn’t. But I’m not in the mood now.”

The hand on his ass withdraws and returns a moment later, two fingers slick with just spit pushing mercilessly into him. Bucky grits his teeth and tries to throw Steve off him, but his weight’s solid and secure over the back of Bucky’s thighs. The only reaction he gets is the hand on his nape digging into skin and the fingers inside him hooking cruelly.

It's just another point of pain at this point, but it still brings tears to Bucky’s eyes.

The fingers are yanked out of him, the sting of it sharp and pointed, but the sounds of spitting and a familiar wet slide is harder on his head. Steve’s weight shifts, and Bucky’s legs are knocked wider, making space for Steve to settle between them.

“Don’t—” is all he manages to say before Steve’s cockhead starts pushing in.

It’s an insane stretch. The pain makes his vision go white, makes him claw and scrabble at the floor, trying and failing to get away from the searing pressure. Steve’s undeterred, briefly letting go of Bucky in favor of grabbing his hips and pulling him back, right onto Steve’s barely wet cock.

It hurts in a myriad of ways, the dull ache of the penetration mingling with the stinging throb of something _tearing_. Bucky cries out wordlessly, even his struggles ceasing as his body stills and tries to cope with the assault. Steve never once stop moving, thrusting, grinding. He fucks Bucky opens with his cock, each jerk of his hips forcing his cock an inch deeper. And there’s nowhere for Bucky to go, no escape to be had, not when Steve’s got him in an iron grip and his legs are kept wide open by Steve’s spread knees.

“Steve, _please_ ,” he grits out.

He’s never above begging, not with Steve. Problem is that it’s hard to stop once he starts. Steve usually gives him enough cause to keep begging with growing desperation.

Steve answers with a vicious thrust that makes pain burn through Bucky. He screams, hands slipping on the floor as he tries to get some kind of leverage. But Steve winds a hand into his hair, fisting the long strands and pulling Bucky’s head back harshly.

“Please what?” Steve growls, voice steady despite the savage thrust of his hips into Bucky. “Please stop? Stop what? Fucking you? Taking you on missions? I don’t fuckin’ think so, Barnes.”

Bucky can’t respond. His thoughts scatter into a thousand nightmares, and he can’t make more than helplessly pained noises when Steve’s got him arched this way.

Steve punishes him with a series of rapid-fire thrusts, the slap of their flesh ringing loudly in the room. It’s like being fucked by a machine, the brutal pace and rock-hard flesh. Steve’s cock’s burns like a brand inside of him, searing a claim into Bucky’s tender insides.

It hurts, but that’s never been a deterrent to Bucky’s dick. It’s filling up between his legs, hot and heavy as it swings with each violent lurch of their bodies.

Steve gets—bored, maybe, like Bucky’s keening cries aren’t enough. He pulls out, a trail of fire where his cock used to be, and his unforgiving grasp on Bucky vanishes along with his dick. But there’s no escape, not before Bucky’s flipped over with effortless ease, slammed on to his back and bent in half and filled back up.

His sore, swollen hole stings like a bitch when Steve slides inside, and a shuddering wail is torn out of him.

Steve looms over him like this, bowed over Bucky as he joins their bodies in another burst of violence. His eyes are fixed on Bucky’s, twin pools of blue fire burning him alive.

“You made a choice,” Steve says, spitting out each word as he fucks hard into Bucky. “You chose this, you chose me, you got to fucking _commit_ , Barnes.”

Bucky snarls at him, and his voice is a hoarse wreck when he speaks, but the anger shines through.

“I’m not a fucking monster.”

Steve’s smile is a terrible thing.

“But I am,” he says, a horrific kind of pride tainting the syllables. “And you—you’re _mine_.”

The word hits him like a blow.

“Steve—”

Steve lifts him by the hips and rams into him, again and again, his teeth bared in a savage grin that Bucky can’t look away from, even as his back arches and cock drips with agonized pleasure.

It hurts when Steve comes in him, seeping into where Bucky’s torn and bleeding. He whimpers, eyes shut tight. Steve fucks him, hips stuttering as he rides out his climax. He’s still hard when it ends, balls-deep inside Bucky. Come seeps out of him, trickling out the edges of his loose, sloppy hole.

“You’re mine,” Steve repeats, quieter this time.

Bucky shakes his head numbly.

Steve grabs his jaw, fingers digging into the skin. It’s less a kiss and more a head-on collision. Steve sucks at Bucky’s lips until the half-healed cut split opens and drenches the kiss with the taste of blood. Bucky bites down hard on Steve’s tongue in retaliation, but all that gets him in a groan and Steve’s cock screwing into him again, starting with a deep, dirty grind that grows stronger, slicker.

Every stroke drags iron nails of sensation along Bucky’s insides. He shudders, writhing under Steve, pinned down so easy and fucked until he’s shouting with every breath. Steve’s hand wraps around Bucky’s cock, and that hurts too, the rough, dry pulls that get him wet and make him ache. He spills into Steve’s hand and is fucked through each convulsive shudder. Steve groans as Bucky’s walls tighten around him, milking his cock helplessly.

And he doesn’t stop stroking, even after Bucky’s spent and half-hard, kept from going soft by the relentless pressure of Steve’s fist. He tries to pry Steve’s hand away, but he feels as weak as a newborn kitten, pawing ineffectively at Steve’s wrist.

“Too much,” Bucky tells him, pleading. “S-Steve.”

Steve barely even seems to notice, eyes closed and lips thinned as he chases his own pleasure and strokes Bucky with an odd, mindless intensity. Bucky hardens in his grip, and that hurts too, the pleasure too sharp to really be pleasure. His body feels like one, pulsing cut, bleeding out with each harsh slam of their hips and each sloppy stroke of his dick.

Bucky comes again anyway, sobbing softly and shuddering through the aftermath.

Steve follows, pulling out painfully as he comes, his release splattering hot and wet on Bucky’s ass, his thighs, dripping off his skin.

Steve stands up, legs shaky but holding his weight. Bucky watches him with vision that’s hazy at the edges, bright spots of white dancing in his eyes. He closes them, just to get a little rest, thankful for the blissful numbness in his head. It’s nice, the quiet. Better than the thoughts that keep him up well into the night.

He doesn’t open them for a long time.

-

Bucky wakes in a cocoon of soft warmth.

He remembers, vaguely, being wiped down and washed and put to bed. He doesn’t remember falling asleep, doesn’t think he properly woke up anyway.

It’s hard to pry his eyes open and face the day. His body still hurts some, but he’s always healed best when he’s asleep, like the serum uses inactivity to turn its full, considerable power to repairing whatever’s been damaged. It leaves Bucky just sore enough that he doesn’t want to leave the nest of blankets Steve has buried him in. He doesn’t think too hard about that either. He’s used, by now, to the swathes of quiet tenderness that follows the most extreme violence, and he knows it doesn’t make it better. Why does Steve bother anyway? He should know fully well that Bucky’s in too deep to leave.

Bucky lies in his cozy cocoon for another few minutes. But his bladder, which woke him up to begin with, doesn’t let him stay there for long.

He’s quiet as he uses the bathroom. There’s a murmur of voices coming from the living room, the source digital. After he’s done, Bucky stays in the bathroom for a while, debating what to do. He’s thirsty, throat parched, but going to the kitchen involves passing by Steve. And he can never predict how Steve will behave after night like the last, whether he’ll pretend nothing has happened or act sweet or rebrand Bucky’s skin with fresh bruises.

Bucky lets his head thump back against the cold tile and gives himself a twisted smile.

“Get out of here, Barnes,” he mutters, even the faint whisper seeming too loud in the small bathroom. “What the fuck does it even matter?”

Steve’s on the couch, laptop open on the table in front of him. Bucky barely looks at him before scurrying to the bathroom. He downs half a liter of water, each gulp a soothing torrent on his dry, aching throat.

He doesn’t let himself linger this time, marching back to the living room like a solider off to war.

Steve doesn’t look up at him, eyes intent on the computer screen. But Bucky stares at him, unnamable feelings churning in his ribcage. Maybe that’s why it takes so long for the sounds to filter through the haunting echoes in his own head.

He walks forwards as if in a trance, coming to a stop behind the couch. It’s a documentary, the narrator’s voice cool and steady, the accompanying pictures old and familiar.

“…winter training at Camp McCoy, Wisconsin, Barnes and the rest of the 107th shipped out to the Italian front. Captured by Hydra troops later that fall, Barnes endured long periods of isolation, depravation, and torture. But his will was strong. In an ironic twist of fate, his prison camp was liberated by none other than his childhood friend, Steve Rogers, now Captain America. Reunited, Barnes and Rogers led Captain America’s newly formed unit, The Howling Commandos. Barnes’ marksmanship was invaluable as Rogers and his team destroyed Hydra bases—”

Steve hits pause.

The screen freezes on a picture of the two of them together. Bucky stares at the sepia-toned boys laughing. They look so fucking young, eyes crinkled merrily as they grin at each other. It seems to blatant to him, the way they felt about each other, like every pixel of this decades-old picture is drenched in the love they dared not name.

“It’s a new one. They’re turning it into a museum exhibit. The dead Captain America and the live one. No one knows you’re missing yet. S.H.I.E.L.D always did like its secrets.”

It takes Bucky a moment to register what Steve said, then another to drag his eyes away from the screen to look at him. He only sees a bowed blond head, Steve hunched over himself and leaning towards the laptop.

Bucky looks again at those Brooklyn boys. Both of them died in the war, one way or the other. It’s their bodies walking around now, filled with souls that saw too much, lived too much.

It wouldn’t have been so bad, would it, if they’d both died for good in those icy graves? Bucky’s long since stopped believing in any kind of afterlife, but maybe he would have seen Steve somewhere, in another life, another time.

But then, that’s what this is, isn’t it? Another life in another time.

“The way you look at him.”

“Steve?”

Steve slams the laptop shut, and Bucky flinches back a step. His left arm recalibrates, plates shifting restlessly. The band at his wrist glints with reflected light.

“The way you look at him,” Steve repeats, and there’s something subdued about the words, a tired sort of bitterness. “Like he’s the fucking world.”

Bucky stands helplessly there for a moment, not knowing what to say. He thinks of the man Steve used to be, the bird-boned boy and the beautiful weapon. Kind and fierce, both of them, only ever as savage as they were righteous.

“He was,” Bucky confesses, each syllable torn right out of his heart. “He is.”

Steve turns around, the movement a thing of controlled violence. He’s glaring, mouth a thin line under the thick beard.

“I’m not him. I’m never going to be him.”

Bucky falters, not quite sure what to say. They’ve broached this topic before but never so directly, only through harsh challenge and anguished silence.

“Steve…” Bucky trails off, biting his lips. He sees Steve’s eyes drop to his mouth, and his stomach flips. He backs up another step, and that’s a mistake because Steve’s expression turns predatory.

He doesn’t hurry when he circumvents the couch to get to Bucky. He’s all slow grace, not once taking his eyes off Bucky, pinning him in his place with nothing but the blazing blue of his eyes.

Bucky stiffens when Steve’s arms come around him. Aches both real and phantom flare all along his body, a few months’ worth of memory engraved permanently into his flesh.

Steve rests a palm over Bucky’s bare chest, right above his quickened heartbeat.

“I can almost smell your fear,” Steve murmurs, eyes half-lidded. “Did you fear him too?”

Bucky mutely shakes his head. Steve’s other hand touches his chin, the grip uncharacteristically light as it tilts Bucky’s face up.

“Why not?”

“You wouldn’t have hurt me then.”

“I did,” Steve says, smiling without amusement. “Beat you black and blue, fucked you till you cried. He loved to make you cry. I remember that.”

Bucky closes his eyes.

“It was different,” he tells Steve. “You know it was different.”

Steve’s silent for a long time. His hands remain as they are, fingers curved over Bucky’s heart, a thumb slotted into the cleft of his chin.

“I remember remembering you, you know.”

Bucky startles, gaping at Steve.

“You said you didn’t—”

“I don’t,” Steve cuts in. “All I have are flashes of a life that’s not mine. And you. It’s always you. But Hydra took its time perfecting their technology. I forgot my name, my life. But I didn’t forget my sniper, my lover. Not at first. They found a way, in the end. Took some time.”

Steve’s calm as he speaks, a hint of a smile at the corner of his lips. It’s not a pleasant expression, but there’s no visible fear accompanying the memory. Bucky is the one left shaking, soul and body trembling as he imagines it.

“It should have been me. I was the one who was supposed to fall. You—you were supposed to _live_. Get out of that fucking war.”

Steve snorts.

“You’d have made a terrible Winter Soldier.” His presses more firmly down on Bucky’s chest, fingers clawed as nails dig into skin. “All this heart. They’d have torn you down, built you into something you wouldn’t recognize in the mirror.”

Bucky sways forward, and Steve holds him up, letting go of his face to wrap that arm around Bucky’s waist.

“Rather it be me than you,” Bucky tells him.

“I’m comfortable with my reflection, Bucky Barnes. You wouldn’t be.”

Maybe that’s true. Maybe whatever emerged of Bucky from the ashes of the Sergeant Barnes and the Winter Soldier wouldn’t be as cold or cruel as the man that pulled itself out of the ruined remains of Captain America. It’s wishful thinking though. Because if Bucky could have been good after all that, then Steve could be too.

“You were the better man of the two of us,” Bucky says, tucking his face into Steve’s neck. The scruff there doesn’t feel alien anymore, and the sense of home lingers in spite of everything.

“Harder you fall,” is all Steve says.

He starts walking, moving Bucky along with him. His back hits the wall, and Steve’s equally solid at his front, caging him in with little effort.

“Look at me.”

Bucky reluctantly detaches his face from Steve neck and looks up. Steve’s face is so close like this, and if eyes were the windows to the soul, Bucky would be staring into the void now.

But he doesn’t believe that, not really. Steve’s not gone. He just changed. He’s still here, and he’s what Bucky chose. He can’t claim ignorance, but he still thinks Steve doesn’t understand how little choice Bucky has when it comes to Steven Grant Rogers. Fuck Captain America, fuck the Winter Soldier. Bucky would throw the whole lot of them into the gaping maw of history if he could just reach in and pull out that loud-mouthed spitfire Bucky fell into and never climbed out of.

Steve’s knuckles graze Bucky’s left cheek. The bruise there isn’t completely gone, which says something about bad it was. The swollen skin smarts at even the gentle touch, and Bucky hisses, flinching back.

Steve rests his fingers underneath the bruise, rubbing absently.

“You should run far away from me,” Steve says.

Bucky shakes his head.

“I won’t let you,” Steve promises, and that’s always the same, the confidence in his voice, the terrible certainty in his eyes. “I’ll fucking kill you if you tried. But you should want to.”

“I _can’t_ ,” Bucky snaps, knocking Steve’s hand away from his face. He doesn’t let go of it though, just digs metal fingers into Steve’s thick wrist. The skin there’s soft and thin, stretched delicately over hard bone. Bucky can’t feel Steve’s pulse with his left arm, but he imagines it beating away against his thumb. “I’m not leaving you again.”

Steve tilts his head to the side, curious and animal-like.

“Why?”

“Steve, you—you’re all I have.”

Steve doesn’t get it. Of course he doesn’t. But he looks pleased, even when he blinks and asks, “You have the Avengers. You have a family. Your sister’s kids and grandkids. You had a life you built here until you ran into me.”

The sound Bucky makes isn’t laughter, but he doesn’t know what else to call it either.

“You don’t understand. You were the love of my life since I was fourteen. I walked back into war for you. Steve, Steve, you _died_ for me. And I tried to follow, I swear I did, but I didn’t, I woke up, and I was so fucking—numb, living without you. And then I saw you, held you. You’re real too, alive in this time. How can I—I can’t lose you again.”

Steve’s expression doesn’t change as Bucky’s breath quickens and his voice turns strangled. But he turns his hand in Bucky’s grip and intertwines their fingers together, flesh slotted against metal.

“I’m not him,” Steve says, and it sounds like a threat and a warning.

“You’re Steve. You’re mine too.”

Bucky doesn’t know if that’s the right thing to say. But it makes Steve kiss him, surging forward violently. Their teeth clack painfully together at the sudden, clumsy collision, but Steve doesn’t seem to care. He bites at Bucky’s lips and sucks on his tongue, every movement frantic. Bucky doesn’t kiss back so much as part his lips and let Steve in, shuddering at the slick slide of their tongues.

Steve ends the kiss as abruptly as he initiated it, pulling back with wide, wild eyes.

“You can’t save me,” he says, biting out the words.

Bucky tightens his grip on Steve’s hand and jerks forward, pressing their chests flush together. He can feel Steve’s heart too, pounding under a thin shirt and layers of sculpted muscle.

“I know.” Bucky kisses him, biting down on Steve’s lip until it splits and bleeds. “I fucking know.”

Steve growls. His hand is on Bucky’s leg suddenly, hiking it up around Steve’s waist. Bucky follows the motion instinctively, jumping up and winding both legs around Steve. He’s held up like he weighs nothing, Steve’s body solid between his legs and his hand tight around Bucky’s back.

Bucky’s slammed back to the wall and kissed within an inch of his life.

He’s not wearing much, just pants that are loose around his hips and quickly torn off in a rough frenzy. A finger slides into him, going in halfway all too easily. Bucky seizes around it, crying out into Steve’s mouth.

“Still so loose,” Steve tells him, the other fingers of that hand splaying over Bucky’s ass. “It hurt?”

“Yes,” Bucky gasps, clinging to Steve and squirming.

“Good.”

Steve’s grin is wide and toothy.

He bends Bucky over the couch, stalking over in two long strides and prying Bucky off him. Bucky limply lets himself be arranged, locking his fingers over the back of the couch when Steve presses them there. The ripped remains of his pants are picked off him. Bucky hisses when his ass and dick are exposed to the cool air, but the sound rises into a high, whining thing when Steve’s warm palms slide up his thighs to grab handfuls of his ass.

And then Steve’s broad shoulders are pushing his legs wider apart and his breath is ghosting hot over Bucky’s crack.

“Steve!”

“I’ll kiss it better,” Steve says, and it’s not an offer, not really. “How about that?”

“I—god, oh my god, _Steve_.”

Steve’s fucking filthy about it, going at it like he’s been starving and Bucky’s ass is his goddamn salvation. It gets Bucky trembling like nothing, leaves him hanging to the couch for dear life as his legs shake and threaten to buckle. Steve just hums and sighs and eats Bucky’s ass as messily as he can, drenching his hole in spit until it gives away so sweetly for the wet pressure of Steve’s tongue.

Bucky’s sobbing in a matter of minutes, shaking violently as he fights not to fall apart. He doesn’t want to move, fuck, he doesn’t want it to stop. Steve’s tongue is soothing, lapping at the pools of hurt he left yesterday. Bucky’s helpless not to give into to, to open his mouth and moan and beg.

Steve slides in a thumb alongside his tongue, and there’s something so filthy about both of them crooking and tugging at Bucky’s insides. It goes right to his head, makes it spin. Bucky shoves his hips back desperately, and he wants to reach down and grab his aching, drooling cock, but if he lets go of the couch, he’ll collapse in a heap of frustrated need.

Bucky must say something, make some sort of pitiful noise, because Steve pulls back, his short bark of laughter almost drowned out by Bucky’s wounded cry.

“I’m not done yet,” Steve tells him, voice dark with promise. He spreads Bucky’s ass wider, slides another thumb to join the other. It’s barely a stretch with how sloppy Steve’s made him. “You should see this, Buck. The fuckin’ view.”

Bucky hides his overheated face in the couch and pushes his ass into Steve’s hands. Steve takes the hint and dives back in. He tugs Bucky’s hole open, thumbs hooked on either side, and that does sting a little but then the tip of Steve’s tongue is tracing the rim and dipping inside, and Bucky throws his head back and _howls_.

Steve fucks him with his tongue, short and wet thrusts that are more than he can take and less than what he needs, and it’s so hard not to squirm, to shake and shudder and just fall apart, but Steve keeps him there, keeps him up, Bucky’s body open for his mouth. Steve’s face pushes in between his cheeks like there’s more he can take, that Bucky can give, but he’s as open as he can be, ass clenching desperately and hole twitching around Steve’s tongue.

Then there’s a scrape of—of _teeth_ , and it doesn’t even hurt, not when Steve seals his mouth over Bucky’s hole and sucks.

Bucky shoots all over the couch, back arching painfully as he screams Steve’s name.

It goes on forever, Steve egging him on with little kitten licks and dirty twists of his tongue inside Bucky. He’s aware of his walls tightening over and over, needing something thicker inside, needing to be filled up, but his orgasm’s no less intense for it, come dripping from his dick. Every pulse of it wrings Bucky dry, and he’s upright by the end of it only because he can’t fathom letting go of his death grip on the couch.

Steve lets up, finally, pulling back with a satisfied hum.

There are familiar slick sounds after that, and Bucky has to struggle to lift his head and look behind him.

He doesn’t know where Steve got the lube from, but it’s there, slicking his hand and cock as he smears it from root to tip. Bucky can’t look away, not until Steve’s hand falls away, leaving his flushed, gleaming dick jutting out proudly from a thatch of dark blond hair.

When Bucky looks up, Steve’s staring at his face.

He doesn’t break eye contact when he moves forward, sliding his dick between Bucky’s cheeks. It’s a warm, wet weight there, pulling a shudder out of Bucky. His heartbeat hasn’t been normal since the bathroom, and it’s pounding like hell now, his gut twisted up with memories of last time—

And the time before that, and the time before that, an avalanche of pain and violence and mind-rending pleasure.

Steve fists his cock and rubs the head against Bucky’s rim.

“Tell me you want it.”

Bucky looks away, hanging his head, shuddering.

He expects Steve to just push in and _take_ it, but all he gets is the blunt tip brushing his hole, a tease and a threat. Bucky grits his teeth and bears it, stomach twisting itself into knots, but Steve gives him nothing, just a promise of more if Bucky will be good and ask for it.

He tries to force it—slams his hips back, shoving ass back into Steve’s cock, but Steve moves like he saw it coming, swaying back with a faint sound of amusement. And then he’s backing to rubbing up against Bucky.

“I can do this all day, pal.”

“Don’t…don’t tease, Steve, c’mon.”

“Tell me,” Steve repeats, sliding his hands up and down Bucky’s sides, a silk-sweet caress. They roam gently down his body, each palm splaying wide over each of Bucky’s cheeks and gripping firmly. He spreads him wide, and Bucky groans when his stretched, spit-wet rim twitches hungrily. “Tell me you want it, Buck.”

Bucky could hold out, is the thing. He could beg without words. He could shove Steve away and walk off. He has always had options, even when Steve was that tiny Brooklyn kid who loved to have Bucky on his knees.

Bucky does what he always has.

“I want it.”

“Yeah?”

He gives in, gives it up. He lets Steve carve his name into Bucky’s tattered soul.

“Yes, yes, I want it, Steve, please, I want it.”

And Steve slides home.

**Author's Note:**

> Drop me a comment if you can <3

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [collab: voxofthevoid](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23361448) by [kocuria-visuals (kocuria)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kocuria/pseuds/kocuria-visuals)




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